Adopt Resolution at UN Human Rights Council

The Rights Practice signed two joint letters, one with 40 organisations in total, and another with 16 other organisations. These urge governments in Geneva at the upcoming United Nations Human Rights Council to adopt resolutions addressing human rights violations in China, with particular focus on Xinjiang and other ethnic minority regions. This would show that the international community is taking a strong stance and express collective concern about the situation. The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system made up of 47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe and the 40th Session will be held in March 2019. See below:

January 30, 2019

At upcoming session of Human Rights Council, States should pass resolution to address human rights violations in the People’s Republic of China

Your Excellency,

The past year was marked by vitally important monitoring and review of China’s human rights situation by the United Nations human rights system. The upcoming session of the UN Human Rights Council provides a key opportunity to reinforce the issues raised over the last year, and express collective concern about worsening rights abuse in China and the government’s failure to follow through on its obligations and commitments.

Considerable information has been available in the last year for governments to deepen their understanding of the situation in the country, spanning two UN reviews and nearly two dozen expert letters or opinions, including a full paragraph in the annual update from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Nonetheless, the Chinese state, at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, continues to suppress dissent and undermine efforts to hold it accountable to its obligations under international agreements.

Millions in the country face dire abuses of their fundamental human rights – be they members of ethnic groups, practitioners of Islam, Tibetan Buddhism or Christianity, human rights defenders, feminists, petitioners, lawyers, journalists, professors or students. Uyghurs and Tibetans are particularly targeted with discriminatory policies and practices. Furthermore, these abuses increasingly affect individuals and communities beyond China's borders...

Joint Statement calling for Xinjiang Resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council

We, a diverse set of human rights and civil society organizations, urge the United Nations Human Rights Council to urgently adopt a resolution establishing an international fact-finding mission to investigate credible allegations that up to one million Turkic Muslims are being arbitraily detained in "political education" camps across Xinjiang, a region in northwest China...

Latest

As part of our work engaging with China on the death penalty, we decided to undertake a review of how far the minimum standards were respected in China’s application of the death penalty. We have produced this interim report in time for the 8th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Brussels.